Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas -- Around 4:30 on Thursday morning a number of people I dont know how many exactly but my rough guess is 500 million received a note from my personal email account.
It told them that to everyones surprise I was in England for a Seminar (capitalized for no reason). It also said that everything was going fine. Fine except for the fact that Id lost my wallet credit cards and money was stranded in another country and was so desperate that I was apparently emailing 500 million or so people for help.
(By the way how great must everything else in my life be going for me to have such a terrible emergency in a foreign country and yet for everything" to average out to going fine"? Maybe the Baylor Womens Basketball team is still undefeated and just claimed the outright
Big 12 Title. Or maybe it was really and I mean really a great Seminar.)
The email then asked each and every reader to send me $2800 to help in this time of need. And it was signed Richard" which I guess is the name I use when Im stuck in another country and hitting folks up for money. Or it could be the name I used to register for the Seminar.
Im thinking that computer hackers need better proof-readers.
Yeah someone hacked into my account. It took pretty much the whole day and a rather exquisite amount of pain to get things back to normal. I truly am fine now.
The good or maybe bad news is that this experience revealed who my friends are. And judging by the lack of response to this urgent request Im frankly disappointed in everyone.
I mean sure it turned out to be a scam. But how could you have really known that at the time? It seems a little unseemly to hide behind that sort of excuse in my alleged time of need.
And let me be clear: if at some point you get a request from lets say my re-election campaign asking for money no excuses. Its for real.
Catching up on the med school
I wrote a couple of
weeks ago about the new playbook were putting together to build a medical school teaching hospital and other vital healthcare resources in Austin. And Ill have more to say over the next couple of weeks about questions that have come up about this effort and what were doing to answer them.
Today I want to make sure you saw a few pieces that have run over the last couple of weeks on why medical education is so important and the progress were making in Austin.
First off the Houston Chronicle ran an editorial a couple of weeks ago noting the
severe lack of doctors in the state and the need for programs to ensure there are enough providers to give Texans the healthcare they need.
The editorial notes we should embrace every alternative thats available: new medical schools more residencies for graduate med students efforts to improve quality and efficiency while steering folks with routine medical issues away from emergency rooms ... you name it.
Thats an important point that no one should lose sight of: as much as a medical school and all of the resources that come with it would mean to our
health economy and quality of life here in Austin and Central Texas
not building one would actually hurt the state.
We simply need more doctors in this region and across Texas and we need to make the proven investments that will make sure we have them.
Progress amid the work
Fortunately the region continues to make progress and add assets that will make a medical school that much more effective and make Central Texans that much healthier.
First we cut the ribbon last week on a new
North Austin clinic thatll provide healthcare to thousands of Travis County residents. It really is the kind of thing that makes you proud of what we can accomplish in this community.
Its also the kind of development that will help us achieve the
10 Goals in 10 Years weve set out for our health our neighborhoods and our economy.
On top of that the Seton Healthcare Family together with the University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School has announced that it will launch Austins first residency program in
emergency medicine bringing eight doctors to University Medical Center Brackenridge and other local facilities to treat patients and train.
These sorts of residencies are the backbone of medical education in Austin and theyre something we already have a lot of.
Right now there are about 100 third-year and fourth-year University of Texas Medical Branch students in Austin full-time to complete their training and help treat patients. And we have another 200 residents in our community through the affiliation agreement between Seton and UT-Southwestern.
Think of it this way: with these programs Austin has many pillars needed for a medical school. We just dont have the building or the ability to offer things like a four-year degree and joint-degree programs.
Its time its past time to build out these programs connect them to the research and training thats already going on at the University of Texas and create the vast resources that will help Central Texans live longer healthier and more prosperous lives.
